Knowledge and Understanding in Science and Theology
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Skepticism and Pluralism Ways of Living a Life Of
SKEPTICISM AND PLURALISM WAYS OF LIVING A LIFE OF AWARENESS AS RECOMMENDED BY THE ZHUANGZI #±r A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PHILOSOPHY AUGUST 2004 By John Trowbridge Dissertation Committee: Roger T. Ames, Chairperson Tamara Albertini Chung-ying Cheng James E. Tiles David R. McCraw © Copyright 2004 by John Trowbridge iii Dedicated to my wife, Jill iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In completing this research, I would like to express my appreciation first and foremost to my wife, Jill, and our three children, James, Holly, and Henry for their support during this process. I would also like to express my gratitude to my entire dissertation committee for their insight and understanding ofthe topics at hand. Studying under Roger Ames has been a transformative experience. In particular, his commitment to taking the Chinese tradition on its own terms and avoiding the tendency among Western interpreters to overwrite traditional Chinese thought with the preoccupations ofWestern philosophy has enabled me to broaden my conception ofphilosophy itself. Roger's seminars on Confucianism and Daoism, and especially a seminar on writing a philosophical translation ofthe Zhongyong r:pJm (Achieving Equilibrium in the Everyday), have greatly influenced my own initial attempts to translate and interpret the seminal philosophical texts ofancient China. Tamara Albertini's expertise in ancient Greek philosophy was indispensable to this project, and a seminar I audited with her, comparing early Greek and ancient Chinese philosophy, was part ofthe inspiration for my choice ofresearch topic. I particularly valued the opportunity to study Daoism and the Yijing ~*~ with Chung-ying Cheng g\Gr:p~ and benefited greatly from his theory ofonto-cosmology as a means of understanding classical Chinese philosophy. -
On the Infinite in Leibniz's Philosophy
On the Infinite in Leibniz's Philosophy Elad Lison Interdisciplinary Studies Unit Science, Technology and Society Ph.D. Thesis Submitted to the Senate of Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, Israel August 2010 This work was carried out under the supervision of Dr. Ohad Nachtomy (Department of Philosophy), Bar-Ilan University. Contents א.……………………………….…………………………………………Hebrew Abstract Prologue…………………………………………………………...………………………1 Part A: Historic Survey Methodological Introduction…………………………………………………………..15 1. Aristotle: Potential Infinite………………………………………………………….16 2. Thomas Aquinas: God and the Infinite………………………………………..…….27 3. William of Ockham: Syncategorematic and Actual Infinite……………………..….32 4. Rabbi Abraham Cohen Herrera: Between Absolute Unity and Unbounded Multitude………………………………………………………………………..….42 5. Galileo Galilei: Continuum Constructed from Infinite Zero's………………………49 6. René Descartes: Infinite as Indefinite…………………………………………….…58 7. Pierre Gassendi: Rejection of the Infinite…………………………………………...69 8. Baruch Spinoza: Infinite Unity…………………………………………………...…73 9. General Background: Leibniz and the History of the Infinite……………………....81 Summary…………………………………………………………………………….…94 Part B: Mathematics Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….99 1. 'De Arte Combinatoria' as a Formal Basis for Thought: Retrospective on Leibniz's 1666 Dissertation………………………………………………………………....102 2. Leibniz and the Infinitesimal Calculus……………………………………….……111 2.1. Mathematical Background: Mathematical Works in 16th-17th Centuries…..111 2.2. Leibniz's Mathematical Development…………………………………….…127 -
The Search for the Historical Gassendi
The Search for the Historical Gassendi Margaret J. Osler University of Calgary Writing about the history of science and the history of philosophy in- volves assumptions about the role of context and about the relationships between past and present ideas. Some historians emphasize the context, concentrating on the intellectual, personal, and social factors that affect the way earlier thinkers have approached their subject. Analytic philoso- phers take a critical approach, considering the logic and merit of the arguments of past thinkers almost as though they are engaging in contem- porary debates. Some philosophers use the ideas of historical ªgures to support their own philosophical agendas. Scholarly studies of the French natural philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) exemplify many of these approaches. What, then, is context? At the most basic level, the context is the text itself. The most acontextual scholars examine only snippets of the text. In- terested in ideas about necessity, arguments for the existence of God, or ideas about matter and gravity, they mine the writings of historical ªgures for their views on these questions without considering the author’s aim for the book or project as a whole. This approach has frequently characterized discussions of Gassendi’s philosophy. His major work, the Syntagma Philo- sophicum, is a massive treatise in difªcult neo-Latin, daunting to all but the hardiest (or most foolish) of scholars. Consequently, of those philosophers and historians who deal with Gassendi at all, many rely on the bits that have been translated into English or French or those that deal with speciªc topics and seldom consider the entirety of his work, but the work as a whole gives the parts their meaning. -
Pierre Gassendi's Animals
[Intellectual History Archive 3, 2018] Begley, Pierre Gassendi’s Animals PIERRE GASSENDI’S ANIMALS: A CASE OF EXCLUSION Justin Begley1 University of Helsinki I. Introduction: A Learned Vegetarian The French priest, professor of mathematics, historian, and philosopher, Pierre Gassendi, was perhaps the most influential and well-respected thinkers of his day. 2 While the linguistic and conceptual complexity of his Latin tomes excluded him from the philosophical canon that was formed during the late eighteenth, historians are now beginning to appreciate just how central his ideas were to the development of early modern intellectual life. But recent studies of Gassendi have consistently bypassed a major component of his thought: his defense of a vegetarian diet.3 Conversely, because it is no small task to identify and translate the relevant passages from Gassendi’s oeuvre, historical surveys of vegetarianism have mostly neglected his arguments. Indeed, in the history of vegetarianism, emphasis has been placed on religious sectarians or intellectual outsiders such as Thomas Bushnell and Roger Crab, while figures such as Gassendi who were, historically speaking, intellectual insiders have paradoxically been neglected. 4 Proponents of vegetarianism have thus been shaped teleologically as progressive or even “radical” thinkers. But Gassendi remained thoroughly embedded in the institutions of his day, and channeled the full gamut of humanist apparatuses in his endeavor to integrate the philosophy of the ancient Greek atomist, Epicurus, into the university curriculum. For this purpose, he sought to cleanse Epicurean philosophy of its popular associations with excess, atheism, and debauchery 1 [email protected] 2 Meric Casaubon, Generall Learning: A Seventeenth-Century Treatise on the Formation of the General Scholar, ed. -
Seventeenth-Century News
131 seventeenth-century news Michael Edwards. Time and The Science of The Soul In Early Modern Philosophy. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 224. Leiden: Brill, 2013. x + 224 pp. $128.00. Review by Karin Susan Fester, Independent Scholar. This is a book for philosophers who are not only interested in the concept of time, but who seek new perspectives on this intriguing and problematical philosophical concept as well as appreciate what René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes have to say about it. Michael Edwards’ book is distinctive because it focuses attention on the numerous late Aristotelian thinkers who assumed that the soul’s diverse functions played an active role in the concept of time. More precisely, it is de- voted to the aspects of time which have either not been thoroughly examined or omitted by other historians of early modern philosophy; instead, these other scholars have shown how Aristotelian natural philosophy was concentrated on “space” rather than “time.” Edwards argues that time is somehow intimately connected to the human ra- tional soul—“‘relative’ or as dependent on motion and the soul”—and this, of course, contrasts with Isaac Newton’s (1642–1727) concept of time as something ‘absolute’ (6). The author seems to achieve a persuasive argument, and he invokes elements from early modern commentaries and textbooks concerning Aristotle’s Physics and De Anima and attempts to find connections and influential elements to the natural and political philosophy of Descartes and Hobbes in the seventeenth century. The in-depth Introduction begins with delineating distinct ways of conceptualizing time: absolute and relative. -
Mit Einer Logischen Kritik Der Mathematischen Logik Und Bibliographie Der Logik
GRUNDRISS DER PYRAMIDALEN LOGIK mit einer logischen Kritik der mathematischen Logik und Bibliographie der Logik Lehrmaterialien aus dem Philosophischen Institut der HHU Düsseldorf Forschungsabteilung für Wissenschaftstheorie Prof. Dr. L. Geldsetzer A AB AC ABD Copyright 2000 vorbehalten Kopieren zum Studiengebrauch erlaubt 2 INHALTSVERZEICHNIS Vorbemerkung Zum Konzept der pyramidalen Logik 4 I. Einführung 4 II. Die logischen Elemente 20 1. Intensionen 20 2. Extensionen 21 3. Der Begriff 24 a. Die reguläreBegriffsstrukturDielogische a. 24 b. Negative Begriffe 25 c. Der widersprüchliche Begriff (contradictio in adiecto bzw. contradictio in terminis) 26 d. Der Dispositionsbegriff 30 e. Der Wahrscheinlichkeitsbegriff 32 f. Der Zahlbegriff 33 g. Sogenannte Relationsbegriffe, Ähnlichkeitsbegriffe und "Familienähnlichkeit" 44 h. Der Begriff des Begriffs in der stoischen Logik 47 i. Methoden der Begriffsbildung: Induktion, Deduktion, Analyse und Synthese 50 4. Die Junktoren 55 a. Die urteilsbildendenDie a.Junktoren 57 1. Die unbeschränkteDie (allgemeine)1.Implikation 57 2. Das unbeschränkte (allgemeine) "Zukommen" 58 3. Die korrelierende Implikation 58 4. Die Kopula bzw. die materiale Implikationmateriale 58Kopula die Diebzw. 4. 5. Das spezielle "Zukommen" bzw. die formale Implikation oder Inklusion 58 6. Die Negation 59 7. Der Existenz- bzw. Produktjunktorbzw.Existenz- Der 7. 59 b. Die ausdrucksbildendenDie b. Junktoren 61 1. Die QuantifikationDie 1. 62 2. Die ÄquivalenzDie 2. 63 3. Die unvollständigeDie Disjunktion3. 63 4. Die vollständige Disjunktion oder Alternative 63 5. Die AdjunktionDie 5. 64 c. Die mathematischenJunktorenDie c. 65 1. Die Summenbildung Die 1. (Additionsjunktor) 68 2. Die SubtraktionDie (Differenzenjunktor)2. 68 3. Die ProduktbildungDie 3. (Multiplikationsjunktor) 68 4. Die Division (Quotienten- oder Proportionsjunktor) 69 5. Die PotenzbildungDie (Potenzjunktor)5. -
Education Or Indoctrination? Montaigne and Emerson on Preserving Freedom in the Teacher-Student Relationship Rebecca Sullivan Teachers College, Columbia University
666 Montaigne and Emerson on Preserving Freedom in the Teacher-Student Relationship Education or Indoctrination? Montaigne and Emerson on Preserving Freedom in the Teacher-Student Relationship Rebecca Sullivan Teachers College, Columbia University INTRODUCTION In his Essays, Michel de Montaigne paints a self-portrait that champions individual judgment. In contemporary educational parlance, he is an advocate of critical thinking: a student’s ability to reflectively evaluate information, test assumptions, ask clarifying questions, and form judgments for herself.1 Individ- ual judgment is a hallmark of a learner’s freedom because it indicates that she is not merely repeating inherited wisdom, but personally holds a conviction. Enabling such freedom in students requires careful consideration of the rela- tionship between teacher and student in learning. In this article, I consider how teacher-student positionality impacts individual judgment using the example of Michel de Montaigne and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Montaigne’s Essays raise the still-relevant question of the relationship between inherited wisdom and personal experience in forming individual judg- ments. However, Montaigne fails to offer a conclusive answer. While Montaigne draws heavily on past thinkers, he gives precedence to his own experience over inherited wisdom in forming judgments. This can be seen, for example, in his essay “Of Friendship,” in which he references past thinkers, but rejects their formulations of friendship when they fail to accord with his own experience. However, while Montaigne articulates the prominence of personal experience over inherited wisdom in forming individual judgments, the form of his writ- ing—the essay—suggests the opposite. The colloquial, conversational style Montaigne employs in essays such as “Of Friendship” invites the reader to trust in Montaigne’s wisdom without having recourse to her own experience. -
Nominalism and Constructivism in Seventeenth-Century Mathematical Philosophy
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector Historia Mathematica 32 (2005) 33–59 www.elsevier.com/locate/hm Nominalism and constructivism in seventeenth-century mathematical philosophy David Sepkoski Department of History, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074, USA Available online 27 November 2003 Abstract This paper argues that the philosophical tradition of nominalism, as evident in the works of Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Hobbes, Isaac Barrow, and Isaac Newton, played an important role in the history of mathematics during the 17th century. I will argue that nominalist philosophy of mathematics offers new clarification of the development of a “constructivist” tradition in mathematical philosophy. This nominalist and constructivist tradition offered a way for contemporary mathematicians to discuss mathematical objects and magnitudes that did not assume these entities were real in a Platonic sense, and helped lay the groundwork for formalist and instrumentalist approaches in modern mathematics. 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Résumé Cet article soutient que la tradition philosophique du nominalisme, évidente dans les travaux de Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Hobbes, Isaac Barrow et Isaac Newton, a joué un rôle important dans l’histoire des mathématiques pendant le dix-septième siècle. L’argument princicipal est que la philosophie nominaliste des mathématiques est à la base du développement d’une tradition « constructiviste » en philosophie mathématique. Cette tradition nominaliste et constructiviste a permis aux mathématiciens contemporains de pouvoir discuter d’objets et quantités mathématiques sans présupposer leur réalité au sens Platonique du terme, et a contribué au developpement desétudes formalistes et instrumentalistes des mathématiques modernes. -
Introduction
Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-86613-2 - Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy Antonia Lolordo Excerpt More information Introduction This book is bothaninterpretation of Gassendi’s central metaphysical, epistemological, and natural philosophical views and an advertisement for their philosophical and historical interest. Historians of seventeenth- century philosophy can usually tell you that Gassendi was an atomist, an empiricist,oramitigated skeptic, as well as an opponent of Aristotle and Descartes. They might add that he attempted to revive Epicureanism. However, few are likely to have any clear conception ofthe theses Gassendi articulates, the argumentsheoffers in their defense, or the systematic connections between them. This is an unfortunatesituation, and I aim to remedy it. There are at leasttwo reasons why those of us who are interested in early modern philosophy and natural philosophy need to know more about Gassendi. The first is widely recognized. Gassendi’s influence and the importance he was accorded by his peers and close contemporaries is unquestionable. Gassendi was a central figure in seventeenth-century philosophy and, as such, very importantfor the development of mod- ern philosophical thought. He knew and was known by such figures as Descartes and Hobbes and is importantfor understanding Leibniz, Locke, and Newton. Were one a seventeenth-century intellectual who found Cartesianism unacceptable, Gassendi’s philosophy was the obvi- ous alternative. Less well known, however, is the philosophical interest -
1 Shakespeare, the Critics, and Humanism 1
N OTES 1 Shakespeare, the Critics, and Humanism 1 . Virgil Heltzel, for example, in his “Introduction,” to Haly Heron’s The Kayes of Counsaile, A Newe Discourse of Morall Philosophie of 1579 (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1954), p. xv, describes the work as “bringing grave and sober moral philosophy home to men’s business and bosoms.” 2 . W i l l i a m B a l d w i n , A Treatise of Morall Philosophie . enlarged by Thomas Palfreyman , 20th ed. (London: Thomas Snodham, [?]1620), in Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints (Gainesville, Florida, 1967), with an introduction by Robert Hood Bowers. For the editions, see STC 1475–1640, Vol. I, 2nd ed., 1986, Nos. 1253 to 1269; and STC, 1641–1700 , 2nd ed., Vol. I, 1972, Nos. 548, 1620. Also see Bowers, “Introduction,” pp. v–vi. For the purposes of the present work, I will refer to the treatise as Baldwin’s rather than Baldwin- Palfreyman’s. The volume appears as “augmented” or “enlarged” by Palfreyman only with the fifth edition of 1555 (STC 1255.5) and the 1620 edition (first of the two in that year) says it is “the sixth time inlarged” by him but there has been no comparative study of what was originally Baldwin’s and what was Palfreyman’s and what the successive “enlargements” entailed. Baldwin’s treatise, along with Thomas Crewe’s The Nosegay of Morall Philosophie , for example, are purported sayings and quotations from a great num- ber of scattered Ancient and more recent writers, but they are organized into running dialogues or commentaries designed to express the compiler’s point of view rather than to transmit faith- fully the thought of the original writer. -
Virtue and Civic Values in Early Modern Jesuit Education
journal of jesuit studies 5 (2018) 530-548 brill.com/jjs Virtue and Civic Values in Early Modern Jesuit Education Jaska Kainulainen University of Helsinki [email protected] Abstract The article suggests that by offering education in the studia humanitatis the Jesuits made an important contribution to early modern political culture. The Jesuit educa- tion facilitated the establishment of political rule or administration of civic affairs in harmony with Christian virtues, and produced generations of citizens who, while studying under the Jesuits, learned to identify piety with civic values. In educating such citizens the Jesuit pedagogues relied heavily on classical rhetoric as formulated by Cicero (106–43 bc), Quintilian (35–100), and Aristotle (384–322 bc). The article de- picts the Jesuits as civic educators and active members of respublica christiana. In so doing, the article emphasizes the importance of Jesuit education to early modern po- litical life. Keywords Jesuit education – civic values – virtue – rhetoric – Cicero – Renaissance humanism This article takes its cue from the observation that Jesuit education was based on the example laid down by the humanist educators of the Renaissance.1 The 1 For this argument, see John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1993), 13–14, 208–12; Paul Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learn ing, 1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 376–78; Marc Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence: Rhétorique et res literaria de la Renaissance au seuil de l’époque classique (Geneva: Droz, 2009), 175–76; Robert A. Maryks, Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), 77. -
Does Pyrrhonism Have Practical Or Epistemic Value? 49
DiegoE.Machuca Does Pyrrhonism HavePractical or Epistemic Value? 1Introduction My purpose in this paper is to examine whether Pyrrhonian scepticism, as this stance is described in Sextus Empiricus’sextant works,has practical or epistemic value. More precisely, Iwould like to consider whether the Pyrrhonist’ssuspension of judg- ment (epochē)and undisturbedness (ataraxia)can be deemed to be of practical or epistemic value. By “practical” value Imean both moral value and prudential value. Moral value refers to moral rightness and wrongness; prudential value to per- sonal or social well-being.Hence, when Iask whether the Pyrrhonist’ssuspension and undisturbedness have practical value, Imean whether they make us behave in amannerthat is morallyright or wrong,and whether they allow us to attain those goals thatwould make it possible to live well. As for “epistemic” value, it ba- sicallyrefers to the values of attaining truth and avoiding error. Hence, when Iask whether the Pyrrhonist’ssuspension has epistemic value, Imean whether it allows us to attain truth and avoid error.Mymain focus will be the practical value of both suspension and undisturbedness, because this is the value thatscholars of an- cient philosophycritical of Pyrrhonism have emphasised. The reason for examining the epistemic value of suspension is thatdoing so will enable afuller assessment of the significance of Pyrrhonism as akind of philosophy, which is my primary concern. Iwill begin by brieflydescribing the states of suspension and undisturbedness and their connection, and by succinctlyconsideringsome objections to the effect that,despite claiming to suspend judgmentacross the board, Pyrrhonists actually hold anumber of beliefs. Thiswill provide the necessary framework for the subse- quent discussions.